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Class Q
:Posted on the forums 15 July 2009: Druid Q&A with the Voice of the Class Design Team, Ghostcrawler Community Team: Q: Where do druids fit into the larger scope of things currently and where do you see them going from this point forward? Ghostcrawler: : and , the original World of Warcraft was intended to be a healer for end-game content. Bears could tank Upper Blackrock okay. But honestly, nobody took cats, bears or moonkin very seriously at level 60. In Burning Crusade, this changed a little. Bears could tank a lot more content, and might have even been overpowered in the endgame if it weren't for Sunwell Radiance. Cats were probably underpowered. You still saw them, but they were there mostly for buffs or because they could slip easily from tanking to dps in a world before dual-spec. They were great for Zul'Aman for example. There were some great Balance druids, but still a lot of Oomkin. Our philosophy at this point in the game was that hybrid classes needed to give up a lot of their power, especially on the dps-side of things, in order to justify their versatility and massive buffs. In Lich King, we set out to change this and make sure all four types of druid had a PvE role in heroic dungeons and raiding. And yes, this meant four roles, because if we were going to let cats do credible dps or bears be able to tank anything in the game then we wanted players to have to commit to one extreme or the other. You can remain a half-bear, half-cat if you want to as well, but you won't be as good at either extreme and my experience is players rarely choose that route.}} : Burning Crusade, they were very difficult to counter in Arena matches. Cyclone, Feral Charge and running and hotting made druids frustratingly slippery. We wanted to chill this out a little in Lich King, largely by pushing Feral Charge farther away and making Tree of Life a real option in PvP. Unfortunately, high tree armor and dispel-at-your peril hots have still kept druids difficult to counter in PvP. Feral druids have always had a place in PvP, but were never as dominant as the Resto druids. There is a little bit of a chicken and egg problem here because while some druids only want to PvP as Feral, others were happy to respec to Resto for PvP. Balance druids seemed even less viable than Feral, which is not ideal and something we want to improve. We tend to take a longer view on some of these things than do the players. We've had other Balance issues that we've wanted to address in PvP first, and getting every spec of every class viable has had to take a back seat on occasion.}} Q: What is it that makes them unique compared to all other classes? Ghostcrawler: : : : Horde and Alliance side. They have the least racial diversity of any class in the game.}} Community Team: Q: What are our thoughts on how Eclipse is functioning and do we have any plans to change how this talent works? Ghostcrawler: : want to Immolate before they Conflagrate, Frost can proc a Brain Freeze and throw out a fast Fireball.}} Community Team: and from doing some serious damage to them.}} Q: How do we feel Moonkins are doing in PvP and do we have plans to improve their survivability? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Are there plans to make any changes to the general spell rotation for deep Balance/Moonkin Druids? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: and which in turn continues to minimize Feral druids' ability to cast spells which they feel is pushing them further and further away from the hybrid playstyle.}} Q: What are our intended goals for the playstyle of Feral druids? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: What are our thoughts on the complexity of the Feral druid damage dealing rotation? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Do we have plans to provide more utility for Feral druids such as a more reliable interrupt? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: How do we feel druid tanks are doing and do we have any immediate changes planned? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Do we have any plans to change and/or improve Savage Defense? Ghostcrawler: : Q: Are there any plans to change the functionality or cooldown of the Cat form charge to better align it with the Bear form version? Ghostcrawler: : Q: Can you give us the reasoning behind why the Bear form swipe is 360 degrees while the Cat version is only 180 degrees? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Can you describe for us what the intended identity and versatilities of the Tree of Life druids are supposed to be? Ghostcrawler: : : Lich King… arguably too well.}} : : : : Community Team: Q: Do we have plans to improve Healing Touch or Tranquility? Ghostcrawler: : : : Community Team: Q: Do we have plans to improve the usefulness of critical strike rating for Restoration druids? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Do we have plans to make these statistics more helpful for them since they are on a wide variety of tanking gear? Ghostcrawler: : Q: Have we considered providing more tanking leather and to prevent extra loot clutter possibly finding ways for Balance and Restoration druids to use solely cloth item since they often use them already? Ghostcrawler: : : Community Team: Q: Do we have any plans to improve how players obtain relic items such as a relic token? Ghostcrawler: : Community Team: Q: Are there any plans for a 310% speed flight form? Ghostcrawler: : Q: What do we think about making spells like Warstomp and Innervate usable while in forms? Ghostcrawler: : Q: Do we plans to alter how the GCD works for form changing so that shifting into a form is as easy as shifting out of one? Ghostcrawler: : Q: For the official word, do we have plans to update more druid form models at some point in the future? Ghostcrawler: :